Askeaton Castle

A ruined castle on a rocky islet in the river Deel, long the principal stronghold of the Earls of Desmond in the region. Founded in the thirteenth century and much expanded later, it includes a great hall with fine window tracery raised in the fifteenth century. It was besieged and largely destroyed during the Desmond rebellions against Elizabethan rule. The riverside ruins, opposite the well-preserved friary in the same town, evoke the power of the Geraldine dynasty that once dominated Munster.